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You Can't Have It Both Ways: Mark Morris Dido and Aeneas
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10374 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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2 / 1993 |
1,463 Words |
| Author
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Octavio Roca
Octavio Roca is music critic for the Washington Times and the
author of the biography Scotto: More Than a Diva. |
Mark Morris, on his own again after his White Oak flirtations, arrived at Washington's Kennedy Center in October with one of his most ambitious and controversial works. The public at the Eisenhower Theater adored him and his comic version of Henry Purcell's tragic masterpiece Dido and Aeneas, with Morris himself cast in the two leading female roles of Dido and Sorceress. It was the American choreographer's first appearance in the capital since he teamed up with Mikhail Baryshnikov for the short-lived White Oaks Project in 1991. Before that, American audiences had most recently enjoyed the Morris touch in performances by his own Monnaie Theater group from Brussels. Dido and Aeneas, danced this season by the new Mark Morris Dance Group, provided a good chance for taking stock of a celebrated career at a singularly critical point.
Before arriving in Washington, the piece was a hit in Belgium's Monnaie Theater, where it was created in 1989, and subsequently at the Edinburgh Festival. Though indisputably a popular success, its artistic merit is by no means beyond doubt. This in itself may not cast a shadow over Morris' impressive oeuvre: He has choreographed more than fifty dances, including such spectacular successes as the cheerfully abstract version of Handel's L'Allegro, il Pensieroso ed il Moderato, and the wickedly Post-modern comic dances of John Adams' Nixon in China.
Even as Morris was greeted by placards of Mark Morris Go Home after replacing the indomitable Maurice Bejart at the Monnaie in 1988, his presence in Brussels had a salutary effect on the European dance scene. Back home in the United States, Morris' hopes and those of his fans ran high for a renewed American career. Baryshnikov, who has once again teamed up with Morris' aggressively accessible compatriot Twyla Tharp, found in Morris' choreography for White Oak one of the most entertaining chapters of his recent artistic life.
Dido and Aeneas ought to have been an ideal vehicle for Morris' talents. The choreographer's love of Baroque music and his interesting movement response to its rhythms have elicited some of the most pleasing dance works of our day. The simple, winning musicality of the choreography in particular has proved a refreshing and unassuming visual counterpart to, say, the vocal intricacies of Handel's music. The laughter in the vocal lines of Handel's L'Allegro found its ideal kinetic image in Morris' convulsive mime. Why was Purcell's Dido so different in performance? There is no single answer, but some key factors are that Morris himself is no longer the stunningly attractive performer his own works require (he now looks resolutely chubby
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